A Sneak Peek at Estelle's 'Sexy, Sane, Aggressive' New Album

Six years since she charmed us senseless with her out-of-nowhere guest feature on Kanye's "American Boy," one-name-wonder Estelle is debuting a sound all her own. And this time, she's no supporting act.

In 2008, I attended what was perhaps the most glorious of fashion parties in the history of New York nightlife: Calvin Klein's 40th anniversary on the not-yet-opened High Line park. For the occasion, guests such as Ashley Olsen, Halle Berry, Naomi Watts, and Claire Danes (whom I saw embrace fellow My So-Called Life alum Jared Leto in a bear hug) assembled inside a pop-up James Turrell light installation to enjoy the musical stylings of a then-unknown U.K. singer named Estelle. (Her smash single "American Boy" with Kanye West had launched earlier that year and everyone was obsessed with the way the words, "I really want to/ come kick it with you" trilled off her tongue.)

Katie Friedman

She wasn't famous, per se, but she was definitely fashion-famous—like when Rebecca Minkoff tapped emerging rapper Theophilus London to perform at her fall 2012 show. And as a 23-year-old in her first Big Girl Job out of college, gawking at the 5,500 hand-planted Ecuadorian roses on a part of the High Line that hadn't been opened to the public in nearly three decades, I was high on it all. I was high on the glamor, the finger-on the-pulseness, Jared Leto's mohawk, and more than anything, that voice: unrushed, plush, and as effervescent as the free-flowing champagne I was sipping.

Katie Friedman

Six years later and I find myself face to face with the woman responsible for the feeling that I, despite the countless fashion parties I've attended since, has never been able to recreate. We're sitting in a small room at Quad Recording Studios, the same location where Tupac was notoriously shot in 1994 (and where countless artists from Mariah Carey to Jay Z have recorded) about to listen to her upcoming album, True Romance, out November 4. (You can pre-order the 11-track effort today.)

The album, which is an unflinching look at the many different stages of love—courage, passion, true romance, and, my favorite, bullshit—took Estelle, now 34, nearly three years to complete. "This album," she begins, perched on a banquette full of high-fidelity audio equipment, a fedora partially obscuring one almond-shaped eye, "is about the words." The velvet-lined room is intimate and cocoon-like—a soundproof oasis of booming base and reverberating treble—but Estelle is soft-spoken; she chooses her words wisely. She prefers that the music tell the story, but warns, "This album is not for the turn up." See ya, Lil Jon.

Listening to an entire album with the artist who made it is unlike anything I've done before. As we coast through the tracks—from "Time After Time" a response track to her popular 2012 song "Thank You" about the frustrating endurance of some loves, to "Make Her Say," a raucous, "Partition"-esque sex jam with lyrics ballsy enough to make Nicki Minaj blush (the censored video, below, features real, honest couples), to "Gotcha Love," a love song written in the aftermath of a boozy night out—I write down things as they occur to me: "disarming, slow, tonal strings," then, "LOUD, so loud," and also, "dogs barking." Perhaps they're not the best notes—after all, I'm no music critic—but what can I say? I'm back in her thrall.

Throughout the listening session, Estelle gently nods her head to the beat, occasionally cocking her head back to emit a peel of laughter, but never loses focus on why she's there. Every time a track wanes, she carefully synthesizes what we've just heard: "We all have sex, we're all crazy, we're all sane, we're all aggressive," she says at the conclusion of reggae-inspired "She Will Love," as the vertigo-inducing video for Kanye West's 2009 track "Amazing" plays on a flat-screen TV." She pauses to adjust her chapeau. "And we're all very nice." No bullshit.

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